29 highly successful people share their best career advice for people in their 20s

Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg says finding your purpose in life isn't enough.AP

If clichés like "Follow your passion," "Give 110%," and "Be true to yourself" just aren't cutting it for you, then we've got some fresh takes on how to get a head start on your career.

From "Don't work too hard" to "Relax," here's some often unconventional career advice from some really successful people:

President Donald Trump: Be an outsider

Donald Trump at Liberty University

During his first commencement address as President of the United States, Donald Trump implored Liberty University graduates to "challenge entrenched interests and failed power structures".

"Remember this: Nothing worth doing ever, ever, ever came easy," Trump said. "Following your convictions means you must be willing to face criticism from those who lack the same courage to do what is right."

Trump told graduates being called an "outsider" was, in fact, a good sign — "It's the outsiders who change the world," he said.

"The more that a broken system tells you that you're wrong, the more certain you must be that you must keep pushing ahead," Trump said.

Mark Zuckerberg: Finding your purpose isn't enough

Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook

Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg says it's not enough to simply find your purpose in life — most young people today already instinctively try to do that, he explains.

Instead, he told Harvard's graduating class of 2017 that the challenge for today's 20-somethings is to create a world where everyone has a sense of purpose.

"Purpose is that feeling that you are part of something bigger than yourself, that you are needed, and that you have something better ahead. Purpose is what creates true happiness," he said.

To help the rest of the world find a sense of purpose, Zuckerberg says young people can do three things:

1. Do great things, no matter how scary this might seem. "The reality is, anything we do will have issues in the future. But that can't keep us from starting," Zuckerberg says.

2. Offer your money and time to help someone out. "Let's give everyone the freedom to pursue their purpose — not only because it's the right thing to do, but because when more people can turn their dreams into something great, we're all better for it," Zuckerberg says.

3. Build community. "We get that our greatest opportunities are now global. We can be the generation that ends poverty, that ends disease. We get that our greatest challenges need global responses too. No country can fight climate change alone or prevent pandemics. Progress now requires coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community," Zuckerberg says.

Richard Branson: Never look back in regret — move on to the next thing

Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

Richard Branson's mother taught him that.

"The amount of time people waste dwelling on failures, rather than putting that energy into another project, always amazes me," the Virgin Group founder and chairman told The Good Entrepreneur. "I have fun running ALL the Virgin businesses — so a setback is never a bad experience, just a learning curve."

Sheryl Sandberg: There is no straight path to where you are going

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"As Pattie Sellers of Fortune Magazine says, careers are not ladders but jungle gyms," the Facebook COO wrote on Quora. "You don't have to have it all figured out."

Sheryl Sandberg recommends having a long-term, abstract dream to work toward in addition to a more concrete 18-month plan. The long-term plan allows you to dream big, while the short-term plan forces you to push yourself and think about how you want to get better over the next year and a half.

"Ask yourself how you can improve and what you're afraid to do," she wrote, adding "that's usually the thing you should try."

Warren Buffett: Exercise humility and restraint

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In a 2010 interview with Yahoo, Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffett saidthat the best advice he ever received was from Berkshire Hathaway board of directors member Thomas Murphy. Murphy had told Buffett:

"Never forget, Warren, you can tell a guy to go to hell tomorrow — you don't give up the right. So just keep your mouth shut today, and see if you feel the same way tomorrow."

During Berkshire Hathaway's 2015 shareholders meeting, Buffett also told a curious seventh-grader that the key to making friends and getting along with coworkers is learning to change your behavior as you mature by emulating those you admire and adopting the qualities they possess.

Bill Gates: Keep things simple

REUTERS/Rick Wilking

In a 2009 interview with CNBC, Microsoft cofounder and chairman Bill Gates admired Warren Buffett's ability to keep things simple:

"You look at his calendar, it's pretty simple. You talk to him about a case where he thinks a business is attractive, and he knows a few basic numbers and facts about it. And [if] it gets less complicated, he feels like then it's something he'll choose to invest in. He picks the things that he's got a model of, a model that really is predictive and that's going to continue to work over a long-term period. And so his ability to boil things down, to just work on the things that really count, to think through the basics — it's so amazing that he can do that. It's a special form of genius."

Source: businessinsider.com